


Hold Me in Your Dreams

by KD writes (KDHeart)



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Backrubs, Dreams, Dreamsharing, F/M, Fluff, Kissing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-17 20:14:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28731012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KDHeart/pseuds/KD%20writes
Summary: Sasha dreamt of Paris like she was taking a sip of cold water on a torrid summer day.
Relationships: Sasha Racket & Oscar Wilde, Sasha Racket/Zolf Smith, Zolf Smith/Oscar Wilde
Comments: 16
Kudos: 35





	Hold Me in Your Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Big thanks to the discord server for the patience and encouragement! 
> 
> Mild spoilers up to ep 180 and some of them accidental, because I started writing this back in December.

It wasn’t the first time Sasha dreamt about Paris. It was one of the places her mind returned to a lot when she was sleeping. She dreamt of Damascus, and fine blades, and of Wilde. She dreamt of Cairo, and sand, and Azu, and opening her heart to her friends. She dreamt of Prague, with its flying buildings, and hoards of zombies, and Hamid excited to see his sister, and Grizzop taking to her so quickly, just as she had taken to him. She dreamt of London and Other London, but the colors were faded and the details mixed together. She dreamt of meeting her friends. She dreamt of losing them. She dreamt of Dover and of crossing the Channel and of Zolf saving her life. She dreamt of a life so far away, it wasn’t even in the past.

She dreamt of Rome, sometimes. Before and after.

She dreamt of Grizzop…

She dreamt of Grizzop, hunting among ancient trees, his Goddess smiling down on him. Those dreams were better. Sometimes she joined him on a hunt and he grinned up at her and she could feel the tears spill from her sleeping body, but she smiled back at him and helped him flank the beast they were after.

She dreamt of places she had never been and would never get to go to, because they didn’t exist yet.

She dreamt of her children, the ones she had taken in and gave the chance of living out their lives.

But Sasha dreamt of Paris like she was taking a sip of cold water on a torrid summer day. Not the catacombs. Not Mr. Ceiling. Those dreams had their own place in her mind. Just… Paris. Before things went to shit. Before they broke the world. When the worst of her worries was Bertie being an ass.

Sasha was back in the hotel room, with Zolf gently minding her injured back and the sound of Hamid and Bertie arguing over the menu in the other room as an oddly comforting background noise.

She wasn’t sure things had really gone this way, because her memories were beginning to smudge around the edges, mixing in with her dreams.

But she knew this was a dream, because Zolf looked younger than she remembers. Or rather, she is still her present self and he looks exactly the way he did back then. It hits her just how young he actually was, younger than she was now, though not in physical years maybe.

For a moment, her thoughts flit to Wilde, who hadn’t been much older, either, and she feels an intense wave of protectiveness.

Sasha wondered if she could seize control of this dream. She didn’t want to simply live through the memory again, or helplessly wander through whatever her subconscious would twist it into. 

She focused on the feel of his hands on her back. They were large, and rough, and steady, tracing the falcon etched into her skin. In the way of dreams, the touch was barely there, but it ghosted through her nerves and brushed against her soul. 

Sasha leaned back a little. She wanted more of that contact. She wanted the gentle press of fingers against her scared flesh to go on a little longer. 

"I miss you," she confessed, wondering if she shouldn't have. But she had lingered on that thought for too long to keep it to herself. 

Zolf let out a startled noise behind her and his hands stilled. 

"I haven't gone anywhere, yet," he eventually said. 

He didn't move and Sasha didn't know if she should turn around, or say something, or just let things fade out into slumber. 

It was _her dream_ , she reminded herself. The worst that could happen was she wakes up and forgets about it. 

"But you will," she says, letting out a deep sigh. "And I won't see you again." 

Zolf sighs in turn and his hands leave her back. Sasha is about to protest, but they settle heavy on her shoulders. 

"I can't tell you how sorry I am about that." 

"I don't blame you for leaving," she said. 

He chuckled. "I blame myself enough."

She shook her head. She didn't know what to say to that. She couldn't tell Zolf how to feel about his own actions. He probably had plenty of time to consider what happened. She certainly had. 

Zolf’s thumbs started tracing circles at the base of her neck and she relaxed into it. 

"I already dropped it, Zolf. You don't have to distract me." 

"You're always too tense," he reproached and gave her shoulders a squeeze. 

Sasha couldn't remember feeling this relaxed in her life. Zolf was easing something deep inside her, a tension she hadn't been fully aware of until then. 

They stood in companionable silence for a while, broken by the occasional sigh from Sasha whenever Zolf teased out another particularly tense spot. And then he moved down, tracing her shoulder blades and the tips of the falcon's wings and she heard the slight mechanical clink in his step. 

Her ears focused on that. 

You couldn't spend your life working with the intricate mechanisms of traps, without being able to pick out the sound of clockwork, no matter how faint and well oiled. This was not something she remembered from her time with Zolf. 

She reached out to the side with one hand and mimed a grabbing motion. 

"Come here, Zolf," she said and waited for him to take her hand. 

He obliged and she pulled him in front of her, all the while listening for the clack of his peg leg or the sloshing of his sea legs. All she heard was the sound of heavy boots and a mechanical whir so faint, she only heard it because she was already trained on it. 

She didn’t dare look Zolf in the face yet, her eyes lingering on his chest. His beard was a little shorter, pleated into a single braid and it was stark white. Sasha was certain it had been blonde earlier.

She couldn't bare look up and see wrinkles. See the passage of decades etched on his face, a reminder of how far apart they now were. 

"You're really here," she said, studying the ring his beard was pulled through. She tried to keep her voice even, but it was hard to keep the disbelief out. 

"As are you, it seems." 

He brushed her hair back - that white streak that still stood out against her now salt-and-pepper hair - and she leaned a little into it. His hand felt so solid. 

"How is this possible?" she asked. 

Zolf hummed, considering. "A surge of wild magic, probably. I'll ask Wilde and Hamid later about it." 

Hearing those names, Sasha finally looked up.

Except for the white hair, he looked nearly unchanged. She tried not to stare, but she could tell he noticed. 

"Azu and Hamid are with you?" she asked. 

"Yeah, they returned a few weeks ago." 

"They're fine?" 

Zolf smiled. He placed his hands on her shoulders, warm against her skin. "They were gone for almost two years and things haven't gone smoothly since they came back, but they're as fine as can be, considering." 

_Two years_ … 

"And what have you been up to for two years?" she asked. 

Zolf sighed and began absently kneading her shoulders. 

"Broke up with Poseidon. You might have noticed the new hair," he chuckled, like that kind of spiritual trauma was an easy joke. Sasha had seen what gods did to faithless followers in the wake of Rome's fall. "Started working with Wilde, of all people, and here we are." 

His voice turned fond and Sasha, trying not to melt under his touch, gave in to some impulse she couldn't place and wrapped her arms around him. She buried her face in his broad chest, his beard tickling at her forehead. 

Zolf’s hands faltered for a moment, then he slid them down to her shoulder blades and he held her tight. 

"Glad the asshole's still around," Sasha whispered into his chest. 

"Well, he died. He got better. He's still insufferable." His tone was fond and between his voice and the strength of his arms, Sasha really did fear she was going to melt. You never knew with dreams. 

"Sounds like you _do_ fancy him," she teased. 

Zolf let out a huff that felt as fake as it was affronted from where she was. It sounded a lot like the first time she asked him that almost two decades ago. 

"He's an ass," Zolf grumbled. "But he's apparently my ass, now." His chuckle rumbled through her and she laughed in turn. 

"I knew it!" she said, pulling away enough to look him in his smug face. "I'm glad. He's really not that bad." 

"He really isn't."

They stayed like that, looking at each other, for a few moments. Sasha’s fingers clutched at the sides of Zolf’s shirt. 

"What about you?" Zolf asked. 

"I'm fine, Zolf. It's… It's been almost twenty years…" There was so much she could tell him about those years. She had learned so much that was lost to history and the Meritocrats' influence. But everything scattered when she wanted to articulate her thoughts. That would make things easy, wouldn't it?

She didn't want to push and lose this bubble.

"It's been hard, but I'm here. I'm free and I'm looking after others and that's more than I thought I'd ever have, before I met you…" 

Zolf looked like he was about to say something, but caught himself. She wasn't sure how to read the look in his eyes. There was so much going on and there was a wet glimmer there she hadn't caught before. 

His hands slid up, fingers digging into her hair, and tilting her head up so she couldn't look away from him. "You'll be great," he said, voice welling with emotion. 

"Zolf?" 

She wanted to hug him again, convinced that this time she surely would melt into him, but he leaned forward, instead. 

Zolf placed a soft kiss to her forehead. It lingered and she let it. 

"I miss you. I don't know how or why we got this, but I need you to know that you'll be great," he said.

"Maybe we'll get another chance," she said, doubting the truth of her own words. Wild magic or whatever this was, the chances of them meeting like this again were slim to non-existent as far as Sasha knew, but she didn't want to spoil the mood. 

"Perhaps," he said, probably thinking the same. 

She hesitated.

Her fingers were still tightly clinging to his shirt, so she relaxed her grip. She placed her hands gently on his hips, never taking her eyes from him. She had so long to think about what she wanted to do next.

This dream… this bubble… this moment they stole from the cruel fates was probably going to disintegrate in the harsh light of dawn.

“Zolf,” she said.

He looked at her and her heart ached at all the missing moments she could see in his eyes.

She might as well take this chance.

“Can I kiss you?” she asked.

Zolf blinked slowly, as her request sank in.

He moved so slowly, she thought he was going to say no.

She wanted to say it was okay, he didn’t have to, but she realized he was nodding. His fingers were brushing through her hair again.

Sasha rose out of the chair to meet him in the middle.

She cupped his face in her hands, her fingers digging into his beard, careful not to pull a single hair out of its braid.

She felt his hands settle on her shoulders, his thumbs barely brushing skin.

The moment seemed to drag on for ever as they inched forward with excruciating deference.

Sasha felt she was going to age another decade before their lips finally met.

But then they did.

Zolf’s moustache tickled her nose.

Their lips pressed softly together, gently mapping out this boundary. 

Everything they did was slow. The way their lips moved against each other. The way Sasha’s fingers left the comfort of Zolf’s soft beard, for the support of his shoulders. The way he pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her.

They were afraid to startle the dream.

Just as slowly, they pulled apart.

Not completely.

They stayed embraced.

They had said their goodbyes. Already. Finally. So they waited for the dream to dissolve into reality.

* * *

Zolf woke up with his face pressed into someone’s chest, and his arms wrapped tight around their waist, and clinging to the edges of a dream.

He tried not to stir, afraid any movement would chase away the memory.

He missed her already.

Oscar wrapped his own arms tighter around Zolf, who could feel the damp on his face now. So that spilled over from the dream.

They stayed like that, Zolf mulling over every moment of his dream, and Oscar lazily stroking his back, pretending he hadn’t woken up to tears soaking through his shirt.

“I dreamt of Sasha,” he finally said, muffled into Oscar’s chest.

He didn’t want to talk about it. He wanted to keep it to himself and guard it like a treasure he did not deserve. But if he did that, he would do Sasha’s memory no favor and the dream would fade, locked in the dark.

“Oh?” Oscar said. He propped his chin on the top of Zolf’s head, like he was trying to cover as much of Zolf as he could.

“She was older,” Zolf said, burrowing closer into Oscar. “I don’t think it was an actual dream.”

He felt Oscar tense, his hands settling in place. So he told him his dream. He took every instance, every movement and every word, and spoke them into the waking world, so they wouldn’t fade into the darkness of his own unreliable memories.

Everything except the kiss. That, he kept for himself. Selfishly tucked it into his heart to keep. Not because he worried Oscar would object, but because it was a part of Sasha she wouldn’t want exposed. Zolf was going to guard it carefully.

As he spoke, he felt Oscar relax.

When he was done, he felt him shift, propping himself on an elbow to better look at Zolf.

“Do you think it’s this place?” Oscar asked.

Zolf considered it.

He shrugged awkwardly on his side.

“It could be the Borealis. It could be that we went knocking on Death’s door. It could be anything. We haven’t been in our depths for a very long time.”

Oscar nodded solemnly.

“Then, you can’t be sure this was a one time thing, either,” he said.

Zolf hesitated. He couldn’t deny he hoped to see her again, but he couldn’t expect that kind of magic to happen again just like that.

He stayed silent.

“And if you do see her again,” Oscar said, leaning down to press a quick kiss to the top of Zolf’s head. “Kiss her for me.”


End file.
